Mission statement:

Armed and Safe is a gun rights advocacy blog, with the mission of debunking the "logic" of the enemies of the Constitutionally guaranteed, fundamental human right of the individual to keep and bear arms.

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Friday, July 06, 2007

Tempest in a Tampa teapot

This "article" doesn't even get past the title ("Assault rifles: Dangerous , deadly and on our streets") without serious accuracy problems--assault rifles, which have a fully automatic fire capability, have been extremely heavily regulated for many decades. I assume the Tammie Fields (the author) meant "assault weapons"--a term made up by the Victim Producing Center's Josh Sugarmann--made up specifically to capitalize on the ignorance of people like Tammie, and their propensity for confusing semi-automatic firearms with fully automatic ones.

She starts with a reference to the famous North Hollywood Bank shootout of 1997.

Tampa – Who can forget the fierce shootout between police and two heavily armed men decked out in protective armor? It wasn't a movie the nation was watching. It was real back in February of 1997 in North Hollywood, California.

Police closed in on the suspects after they robbed a bank. It would become the most violent shootout in police history revealing that the bad guys are arming themselves most times better than police.
"Most times?" How does one incident reveal anything about what happens "most times"? For that matter, does the fact that she had to go ten years in the past to find her illustrative case not indicate that it was an extremely unusual event?

Next, she does her best to tie that bit of history in with current events.
Then fast forward to this week in Tampa. Local police say Antwan Gould and Derrick Howie, convicted felons, not only sold undercover officers cocaine at the Brittany Apartment complex on Dale Mabry but when officers arrested the two they found a high powered assault rifle in the back seat of their car.
The trouble is that the "high powered assault rifle" was an SKS--neither "high powered" (the 7.62x39mm round is a good deal less powerful than popular deer hunting calibers like the .30-06, .270 Winchester, etc.), nor an "assault rifle" (it has no fully automatic fire capability--in fact, by most definitions of "assault weapon," it is not even one of those).

Perhaps the police officers will clear up Tammie's confusion . . . nope:
According to detectives Gould and Howie were armed with an SKS assault rifle. It was fully loaded with enough power to send a bullet slicing through a car door according to the undercover officer. "It's a military round. So chances are the vest we wear on a day to day basis would not have helped us a whole lot with that round."
Enough power to send a bullet through sheet metal? The horror! Also, the fact that it's a "military round" has nothing to do with the inability of soft body armor (the kind worn by most police officers--and even that sounds kind of unlikely for undercover officers) to stop it--that would be the case with just about any centerfire rifle round.

Tammie should stop worrying about "assault rifles" on Tampa's streets, and start worrying about her lack of knowledge of the subjects she covers.

7 comments:

BobG said...

I always get amused at the 7.62x39mm being called "high-powered"; basically it is less powerful than a 30-30.

John R said...

You guys just don't get it.

Tammie is a shill for the surplus rifle marketers. The more the average Joe hears about these "high powered" assault SKS's, the more they are willing to pay at the gun show. It's a conspiracy I tell ya, a conspiracy.

Anonymous said...

It's the tampa trib. They and their comrade-in-arms paper across the bay - the st. pete. times - are just a couple of typical leftist/socialist/lib fish wrappers. Except I wouldn't want to contaminate the fish guts. Racoons have to eat too, ya' know.

Anonymous said...

If sheet metal penetration is the test, then my Daisy 880 was a high-powered assault-rifle.

By the way, my own, uh, scientific tests have revealed that a 12 gauge shotgun slug will go through a Ford pickup truck door, a freezer door, the size of a freezer, and still have enough energy to get lodged in the other side.

There seems to be no end to the parade of blissninnys who are surprised that moving objects have momentum, and are therefore "dangerous". Like how a 16 pound bowling ball rolled by your average bowler carries more energy than a standard velocity .22 Long Rifle round.

Don said...

tfields@tampabays10.com

me said...

but, but...did it have a bayonet?

did they ask to see if had been smuggled in over the wide open border or in a nice friendly shipment of (tainted) Chinese goods?

Don said...

She thanked me for my feedback and said she really appreciated it. I can't decide if that means:

1. "Fuck off, gun nut."

or

2. "BEEP BLEEP BOOP I AM EMAIL RESPONSE BOT THANK YOU FOR FEEDBACK HU-MAN BLEEP BOOP."

Either way, it's pretty touching.